Chapter 1211: The Second Emergency Mission

In fact, Lu Zhou’s intuition was accurate.

Not accurate in the sense that he had predicted some incredible scientific theory.

But accurate in the sense that this observation was going to bring them a lot of trouble.

An unexplainable physics phenomenon was not always scary, but if this phenomenon conflicted with the foundations of modern physics, then the impact could be significant.

Lu Zhou went into a toilet stall and entered the system space. He walked in front of the pale blue information screen.

“System, open my mission panel!”

This was exactly like the last emergency mission.

A lock icon was added to his “Control of Earth and Moon” mission. Underneath the old mission, there was a new mission that was marked with an emergency icon.

[Emergency Mission: Call From The Void (Threat level: ?)]

[Description: The road to the search for absolute truth is often shaky. There are many mysterious things that we don’t understand in this vast universe. Do not be tempted by the illusion of truth…]

[Requirements: Find the reason behind the abnormal data. Techniques that can be taken include but are not limited to:

[1]

[Rewards: ???]

Lu Zhou: “???”

After Lu Zhou finished reading the mission panel, he was more confused than the three question marks inside the mission reward column.

What does remove and destroy mean?

Does it mean to exterminate all of the physicists that have discovered this problem?

What made him even more curious was the swarm mentality, he had never seen that before.

As well as the “spirit of the great universe”…

Lu Zhou thought of a similar phrase appearing in his memory of the Calan Empire. He frowned and began to think.

The spirit of the universe means “omnipotent” in the various religions and cultural forms of the Void Civilization. This is what “The Observer” claimed. Or maybe there’s a civilization called the “spirit of the universe”…

Maybe just like an “omnipotent” advanced civilization, it dominates a certain corner of the universe or controls the physical laws in some form. Perhaps it even becomes a part of nature itself.

If only there is a way to learn the Void Civilization language.

When Lu Zhou tried to find research materials, most of the things he came across were science fiction.

Of course, rather than believing in some mysterious being, Lu Zhou was more inclined to believe that the spirit of the universe was a physics concept.

However, after seeing the results of the experiment, his understanding of physics was subverted…

“Does this seem too unscientific?”

Lu Zhou came back into the office. Luo Wenxuan said while holding a coffee cup in his hand, “If our observations are objectively correct, the entire foundation of physics might be overthrown by us.”

The conservation of mass energy in physics was equivalent to the Peano axioms in mathematics.

If someone claimed that mass energy could be produced out of thin air, it was equivalent to saying that 1+1=3. It was a ridiculous claim; even a primary school student would laugh at them.

However, the results of the experiment were clear as day. The mass energy increase ratio was 53%. Basically, after two lead ions with 1 unit of energy collided, they actually produced 2.53 lead ions.

Where did the extra 0.53 lead ion energy come from?

Nobody knew.

They also did not observe any signs of interference from the external environment.

It was like magic.

Lu Zhou composed himself and spoke calmly.

“The foundation of physics has been torn down countless times, so what’s one more. It can’t be ‘unscientific’ even if you don’t even know what the science behind this is.”

Luo Wenxuan: “Man, why do you have to insult me like that?”

“You misunderstood. I didn’t insult anyone.” Lu Zhou looked at Luo Wenxuan and said, “Also, I think there’s an ‘external agent’ acting on our experiment.”

“External agent?” Luo Wenxuan frowned and said, “You’re saying there are aliens interfering with our experiment?”

Luo Wenxuan gestured with his hand.

“Like the aliens… in Independence Day?”

Lu Zhou looked at him and explained patiently, “This is a possibility. Before we catch an alien and interrogate it, we can’t rule out this possibility… However, I must point out that the probability of this is astronomically low. They would have to exist in the first place, as well as having the technology and motive to do something like this. There are a million other ways they could interfere with our technological development.”

Luo Wenxuan shrugged.

“I’m just making a joke to liven up the atmosphere…”

Lu Zhou spoke in a serious way.

“In any case, we need to collect more experimental data.

“Whether it’s because of aliens or because of the truth of the universe, its existence has subverted our understanding of physics.

“I still believe that significant mass energy cannot be produced out of thin air. Something must be interfering with our experiment… All we have to do is to prove this and give it a reasonable explanation!

“I’m not joking around. I’m sure you understand why I’m thinking this way.”

Luo Wenxuan silently looked at Lu Zhou’s serious face. After a while, he sighed and took a sip from his coffee cup.

After a moment of pause, he asked, “Should we release the research results?”

Lu Zhou spent half a minute thinking before nodding.

“Make it public.

“We need bright minds to help us.”

…

On the first Tuesday in May, an extraordinary event happened in the international physics community.

The latest research results published by the ILHCRC showed that during the collision experiment in the 5.12~5.22 TeV energy region, the colliding lead ions did not lose their mass as expected, but instead, they had gained mass.

Once the news broke out, it immediately caused an uproar in the international physics community.

Because this result violated the “common sense” of physics.

In fact, this was not the first time a collision experiment on lead ions was conducted. A long time ago, CERN used lead ions to simulate the “Big Bang” collision. However, their experiment was at a much lower collision energy level.

No one expected this research result.

The significance of this news on the physics community was akin to the OPERA experiment in the second half of 2011, where CERN announced in a press release that their researchers had discovered neutrinos moving faster than the speed of light by 0.0025%.

This incident was spread around the physics community for half a year, and in the end, the leader of the OPERA research team, Ereditato, had to resign.

Many people were surprised that this kind of accident happened in CERN, the temple of physics. They were shocked at how stupid the research team members were.

After all, even a high school student knew that nothing could exceed the speed of light.

In fact, this wasn’t the first time something like this had happened in scientific research.

Back in 2006, Fermilab’s MINOS—Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search—project also found signs of neutrino passing the speed of light. The result was not statistically significant, so it was not recognized by the physics community.

Even the researchers of “OPERA” did not believe their experimental results.

They even spent several months checking the experimental equipment and repeating the experiment in order to prove that they were wrong. Unfortunately, they still couldn’t find the problem.

Therefore, they finally “bravely” released the experimental results, leaving this issue to the entire physics community for judgment.

This was what caused the infamous research paper.

Interestingly, there were subtle differences in the attitudes of scientists from various countries on this false experiment result. Not everyone believed that the conclusion of the “OPERA” project was wrong.

For example, many Japanese researchers in this field said they had “confidence in OPERA”. As for Chinese scientists, their statements were more ambiguous. They said OPERA’s “research on the possibility of faster than light travel should start from the essence of physics”.

Which meant a whole lot of nothing.

As for the British and American physicists, they were generally against this research.

Probably the most outspoken physicist was Jim Eckert at the University of Surrey.

In an interview, he publicly declared that “If the OPERA experiment proves to be correct, and the neutrinos surpass the speed of light, I will eat a sock.”

In the academic community, “eating” an inedible object was a way of expressing one’s confidence.

Regardless, the OPERA experiment was determined to be an error.

The person in charge of the Icarus project repeated the experiment and said that the experimental results they measured were exactly the same as Einstein’s calculations, ultimately rejecting the result from OPERA.

The cause for the error was apparently due to the optical cable between the GPS receiver and the computer becoming lose, as well as the oscillator circuit that did not connect properly.

But now, the physics community was in a similar situation again.

The theory of relativity wasn’t the only theory in threat, the entire foundation of physics was in danger.

The entire physics community was going crazy…

[1] The spirit of the great universe guides us forward. (Idealism +10)

[2. Every cause must have a reason, there is no emotion in the universe, only truth. (Materialism +10

[3. The greats don’t cater to the trivial. Now is not the time to solve this problem. (Authoritarianism +10)

[4. Remove, destroy. (Swarm mentality +10)